I've been running on my own, for exercise, ever since college. At first, I hated it. And I mean HATED it. But I did it anyway, and after a while I was able to stand it, and then I even started to enjoy myself. Then I suddenly started to run more and more, until I was running 9 or 10 miles at a time, every time. This was very, very stupid of me, because of course, I hurt myself! My knees ached all the time. So for about a year I didn't run at all, then slowly I was able to run again, but I never ran more than about 3 or 4 miles. Aside from a couple of embarrassingly slow 5Ks, I never really did much except run on my own, and usually only when it was nice out and I had some time to kill.
So about a year ago, I decided that while I was still (sort of ) young and (mostly) healthy, I should take my running more seriously, and maybe even try to complete a Marathon! I printed out a training schedule from coolrunning.com, and started to follow it. I think I only told 2, maybe 3 people about my plan, because, knowing myself, I didn't want to tell the whole world I was going to do something and then look like a doofus when I never followed through. And sure enough, I stuck with the schedule for about a month, got up to about 6 miles, and then just lost interest.
Then this past December I got a mailing from Team In Training, saying that they were holding an informational meeting near me in January. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I signed up just to see what it was all about. When I went to the meeting, I got to hear from people who have participated, including one of the Honored Heroes who has survived cancer AND completed a half-Marathon after suffering a broken hip, and they all made it clear that this program really could help me accomplish my goal... and that I could help others at the same time by raising funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. In short, it was really inspirational and got me pumped to get started!
I must have been very enthusiastic, because I came home and raved about it so much that Chris signed up too!
I know that this time around, I'm going to have a group of people to keep me motivated, a structured schedule to keep me from over-(or under-) doing it, and, probably most importantly, a husband to pull me out of bed every Saturday between now and June!
I also have the knowledge that no matter how hard it might get, it'll never be as hard as living with a blood cancer, and I think that'll make me do it for those people who are, when I'm feeling tired or just plain lazy.
Of course the other motivation is that now I've told everyone about my goal, so I'm going to have to do everything in my power to reach it... or I'll look like a HUGE doofus! ;-)
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